Silver Stars (Front Lines 2)

“Yep,” Jenou says.

This big of a distribution of ammunition—loose .30 caliber for the M1 Garands and the BAR, shorter .30 caliber carbine rounds, grenades in fragmentation, smoke and incendiary models—signals an action is coming.

The three of them mechanically top off their rifle and carbine clips and stuff loose bullets and grenades in wherever possible. For once Rio is not worried about topping off her canteen. There is no shortage of water.

Now they have a nice, fresh ammo crate the size of a footstool, which they set atop the mud at the bottom of their hole. It clears the water by three inches and they decide to rotate, each getting an hour in turn to sit on it.

Rio goes second, and the instant her butt hits wood she’s asleep, her body jerking automatically when she starts to fall forward.

When Cat rouses her Rio sees Jenou leaning, one foot in the slurry, one foot bare. When Jenou pulls off her sock, Rio sees puffy white flesh coming off with it. Jenou’s big toe is swollen and she wonders aloud whether piercing it would release pus and lessen her pain. Or whether any puncture wound in these conditions is likely to lead to far worse infection.

An hour’s disturbed sleep has done little to clear Rio’s mind, rather it deepens her descent into a sort of dream state. Her thoughts are fragments of memory, images without narrative: her family, Strand, the induction center, Jack, a much younger Jenou, dry hills. It’s that last image that captures her attention, and for a while in imagination she is hiking up a hill covered in desiccated, yellowed grass, set off by a small stand of trees. The sky is blue. A red-tailed hawk rides the wind, looking for an unwary mouse. A biplane floats overhead, and there’s Strand waving down at Rio as she rides a black-and-white cow to the top of the hill.

Rio jerks awake. “What?”

She has slumped right down into the slurry, and Jenou is shaking her shoulder.

“Time,” Jenou says.

Darkness has fallen. The rain is a slow drizzle, almost a mist now, as if the sky is down to the last of its moisture. Rio crawls up out of the hole and to her left and right more soldiers rise from the mud, like a parody of creation: And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground . . .

But not dust, mud.

The squad forms up on Stick, and the platoon as a whole forms up to either side of Cole, who is beside Lieutenant Stone. Rio hasn’t seen the lieutenant in a while, and he does not look good. His earlier restless energy seems to have been sucked right out of him. Beyond them in the dark the rest of the division is on the move. They slog forward, a long line of men and women, silent but for the squelch of their boots, back to the river.

The engineers have managed to set up two narrow pontoon bridges. The Germans haven’t blown them up, which is ominous, for it can only

mean the Germans are waiting until they have living targets.

“Okay,” Cole says. “We’re second across, behind First Platoon.”

“Can’t believe Stone didn’t volunteer us,” Cat says.

“He’s growing up fast,” Stick says, and it’s almost enough to make Rio smile. Dain Sticklin, who started in basic with her and Jenou, is now the wise sergeant.

First Platoon steps onto the swaying, unsteady bridge, holding the guide rope, which is very little help. The German gunners wait patiently until the lead element is almost across, and then the fire comes pouring down, knocking GIs left and right into the water, where they flounder and cling and try to swim, or float away, dead.

“Now!”

And Cole’s platoon rushes down the bank, and they start yelling, yelling to keep their courage up, piling pell-mell toward the bridge to get it over with, a headlong rush to destruction. But now they have a bit of luck, as an American mortar lands a lucky shot and knocks out the nearest machine gun nest.

Rio runs, staggers as the bridge moves beneath her, rights herself, and runs, with Jenou just ahead and Pang behind. A second machine gun sends a line of tracers arcing toward them, but it’s farther away and by some miracle the squad reaches the opposite shore, where they flop down, panting.

The next squad isn’t so lucky. Rio sees two of their people knocked like bowling pins into the churning water.

Allied artillery has opened up well beyond the river, hitting the Germans in the rear, doing nothing to stop the small arms fire but playing hell with the Kraut mortars, which, nevertheless, keep firing. Beebee cries out in pain as a piece of hot shrapnel scrapes a quarter inch of flesh from his thigh.

“We gotta push in!” Cole yells.

Stick says, “Come on,” and they are up and clambering hand over hand up a slippery slope, smoke suddenly everywhere, smoke torn by renewed rain. Ahead there must be a German position, a dark lump revealed only by the light of tracer rounds.

Rio is on her belly now, almost swimming through the mud, legs pistoning, elbows digging, her rifle in the crooks of those elbows.

“Smoke!” Stick shouts, and Jack and Jenou both throw smoke grenades toward the presumed but invisible machine gun. The smoke billows, blinding Rio at least as much as it must be blinding the Germans, but she crawls on until stopped by a soft but heavy obstacle.

Her face is inches from a corpse, bloated and reeking of feces and decay. A corpse in American uniform.

She crawls around it and already the smoke is dissipating, but there’s Jenou on her right, on hands and knees, her carbine slung over her back. The Germans have spotted her, and Rio sees the little splashes of bullets landing all around her friend.